martes, 23 de febrero de 2016

For us, life changed the day we saw the sky
on fire. Or, more precisely, we saw fire falling off the sky. I remember waking
up by the noise outside, as I always left my window open when I slept, because
of the heat at nights. My parents and the neighbors were talking very loud for
so early in the morning and my brother, who slept in bed next to mine, was not
there but standing by the door, hearing everything. Then, not even having the
chance of asking what was going on, I heard mom walking towards our room.
Brother ran to bed and pretended he was asleep but he did a really awful job at
it.

She told us in a hushed voice, for some
reason, to get out of bed and put on some slippers. She rushed us and we went
with her. When we went out of the house, dad was already there looking up. We
all looked up too and we saw it: a big ball of fire was crossing the sky. It
didn’t look like something that nature would do but, then again, I had never
really seen a real meteorite so maybe that was it. I then remembered the many
shows I had seen about the extinction of the dinosaurs and thought that maybe
it was our turn and that’s why we were all outside.

I thought it was a little bit weird to go out
and then look at the thing that was going to destroy us, our homes and our
planet, but when we started moving towards the beach, I found it even stranger.
Dad held mom’s hand and she held mine and I held my brother’s. I honestly
thought our time on Earth had come so I had no problem walking with everyone
side by side and in a strange harmony, crossing the few blocks that separated
us from the ocean. When we got there, a crowd had already settled down, many
families and old people and kids and lonely folks. They were all looking up.

The ball of fire was getting considerably larger
and it came with a weird sound, like the one a string gust of wind would do but
much more annoying. It wasn’t the nicest thing to hear just before dying but I
guessed I couldn’t really complain. I was on the beach, which I loved, I had my
parents and… Shit, they had left Captain back in the house! I told mom but she
wouldn’t pay attention, not pulling her eyes away from the fireball. I wanted
my dog with me if I was going to die so I released myself from my family’s grip
and ran to the house.

As old as he was, he was sleeping, not minding
a bit about the fireball or the scandal people had created for hours. I grabbed
him by the collar and, at first; he was not very willing to come. But after
some petting and food, he came peacefully. As we walked to the beach, I felt
suddenly very hot and realized it was the fireball, cruising the sky exactly
above me. Captain barked at it and then it happened all so fast, as if someone
(maybe God) had pushed the “fast forward” button. When I got to the beach, the
ball of fire had already fell.

But it did not destroy us. Actually, my last
thought before it fell was that it wasn’t a ball at all. As close as it was, it
didn’t have a real shape, not one that I could pinpoint. People on the beach
had pulled back as some waves came in but didn’t do much damage. There, on the
horizon, fire could still be seen but it was dying. I imagined a monster,
burning and dying in the middle of the ocean. It really looked like one, due to
the shape of the object. I realized that’s what it was because nature would not
do something like that, which such and odd shape.

Captain barked and growled. That snapped my
family out, my dad telling us that it was better to go back home, as nothing
more would happen tonight. He was wrong but we went anyway. I slept with
Captain in my bed and he didn’t mind. He was a strange dog, preferring
sometimes to be away from humans, especially young kids. But that night,
somehow, he didn’t mind the attention and care and I was showing him. I even
kissed his forehead before going to sleep and he didn’t even budge.

The next morning, I was woken up again by the
sound of my parents’ voices. I asked myself if they weren’t able to shut up, as
I really wanted to keep on sleeping. I felt tired and my body ached, as I
needed to sleep some more. Again, my mother came to our room to get us to have
some breakfast. After all it was a school day. It was too early so I ate my
cereal not even realizing I was spilling milk all over the place. I showered
afterwards and got my uniform ready. Walking with brother on my side, I was
still sleepy but we managed to find the way to school.

Yet, we noticed something was wrong.
Policemen, or at least they looked like policemen, were everywhere. They were
in the corner of the street checking lampposts, or asking people questions in
front of their houses or running somewhere. Our small town did not have a
police department. We depended on the next town for that. So who were those men
and women? They were dressed in black and had a small logo on their shoulder
but I couldn’t see what it was.

In school, teachers seemed as distracted and
sleepy as the rest of us. They all tried to do what they had to do but it was
almost impossible. Kids were not listening and teachers were obviously not interested
in speaking about mathematics or chemistry or history. Some yawned several
times and others just looked at the window as if they were hoping for it to get
shattered into a thousand pieces. It was the first time I saw kids actually
sleeping on their desks and the teacher not saying anything to them. I would
have liked to do that but when I decided to one of the men came in the school
and said the classes were suspended.

At home, mom explained those men were from the
government and that they needed everyone’s help to salvage whatever it was that
had fallen from the sky. They needed experienced swimmers and divers in order
to help them, as only people from the area would know about the depth and
characteristics of the water close to town. Dad had offered to help them, as he
was a fisherman, and that’s why he wasn’t there to greet us from school.
Normally he would come back early from fishing but he wasn’t there then. We
joined mom in order to look the work he was doing from afar but got bored soon
because there were no hills from which we could actually see something.

The rest of that week was all the same. Dad
started to get paid for his help but he had to leave early in the morning and
would return late in the afternoon. He was always so tired he would eat
half-asleep and then just fall into bed like a rock. Mom seemed worried for him
but as my brother and I were deemed to young to ask anything, we simply didn’t.
But we were worried too. Dad had always been such a joker and he loved to play
around after dinner but during that weak he was practically a zombie.

The third day after the “fireball” had fallen
from the sky, a rumor ran across town. Apparently, some said that the thing
that had fallen in the ocean was actually a spaceship and that the government
was using us to get to them, them of course being the aliens. I found this a
little stupid of them because if we helped them many people would know, so how
would they cover up that? Killing everyone? No, too many questions would come
up. I would make drawings in class of the aliens and the ship. I would also
imagine talking to one of them and him telling me were he came from and how
sorry he was to have crashed on Earth.

My brother had nightmares about it, obviously
he had been told awful stories about aliens by his friends. After all, most
books about them it the library was about how evil they were and how they loved
to destroy humanity ever single time they were able to. In some old movie
magazine, they were even very similar to insects and I guess that was the image
my brother had in his mind because he went insane when, walking to school, we
saw a butterfly.

The men in black left town after exactly seven
days. They had taken out all they could from the ship and dad explained they
could come back to take the ship, part by part as it was huge. As he seemed a
little bit more rested we asked him about the aliens and their technology. But
he only laughed and told us that he saw no aliens. Then his expression turned
grim and said no more.

Mother would explain that night that the object
in the ocean was a space station, made by men, and that it had failed somehow
and just fell off the sky. People had died on it and the men from the government
had come for their bodies, to give them to their families. I couldn’t sleep
that night. Somehow, I couldn’t stop thinking about those astronauts and how we
saw them die.

lunes, 2 de noviembre de 2015

The wind roared and roared. It seemed like
it carried the voices of thousands of people long deceased, as if it all of
them had decided that life on planet L should be eradicated. For thousands of
years, the elders had gathered every single piece of mysticism and mythology,
every tale and story told by a grandmother or a priest. And in many of those
tales the wind played a very important role. It was always a destructive force,
a very awful power of nature that menaced everything on its path, specially the
sensible civilization that had grown on L. Despite their advancements in many
fields, they still hadn’t been able to put an end to the never-ending problem
of the wind. Besides, they knew that doing anything against it would cause
consequences and who knew what those might be.

Planet L was mostly water, so the wind didn’t
really have obstacles that would stop it, like mountain ranges. On L, the only
obstacles were caves dug underground by centuries of people trying to find a
solution for their awful problem. They had also tried to build walls but that
had failed fast. The only way to properly survive was underground, below the
few continental masses of the planet. The cities below were small and very
damp, but the people had adapted fast and did not care anymore. They had also
developed a great sense of hearing and of sight, meaning they could navigate
the caves without fear of getting lost or hurt by falling or something like
that.

Their way of living was the main reason no one
in that area of the galaxy knew of their existence. Funny enough, many
creatures of the universe knew planet L. Pirates, bounty hunters and warriors
met there sometimes to exchange prisoners, goods or just to kill each other off
in very bloody battles. Almost all alien creatures could withstand the wind
easily, at least in some regions. And they liked that it made a cover for them,
in case authorities followed them from other systems. But the inhabitants of L
had no idea this had been going on for a long time. Their personal belief was
that no one on the galaxy would be interested in landing in such a nightmare of
a planet.

One day, however, something rather different
happened. Two ships entered L at very high speed, breaking the sound barrier
several times. One was after the other and, from time to time, it fired on it.
They had cannons mounted everywhere so one could only think they were bounty
hunters or assassins. The ship being attacked caught fire but kept fleeing into
some more shots mad it crash into one of the largest islands of the windy
world. The ship that went down exploded and the other one just left, its crew
thinking that all life inside of the downed ship would soon be dead, if it
already wasn’t. It was a matter of time.

Below, the people of a city had felt the tremor
of the ship crashing into the ground. They had been scared for a moment, but
then remembered that the weather report had clarified that a very strong storm
was going to take place outside, so it was better to stay at home and close all
doors, just in case the wind breached the main entrance. That was almost
impossible as the main entrance was made from an incredibly strong type of
metal they had found when building the caves, but these people preferred to
play it safe, specially when from their houses they could hear the moaning of
the wind and the voices of all creatures that had died out there in it. For the
young ones, the wind was a monster to avoid. For the older ones, it was the
difference between life and death and the thing that kept them there, at home.

As they all ran to their houses and took
shelter from the sound of the wind, in the downed ship its pilot was struggling
to get out of there fast. The other members of its crew had been killed and he
was the only one capable to transport their precious cargo back to their home
planet. The treasure was on a small chest he grabbed with bloodied hands. He
put it on a bag, which in turn he put on his back. He checked conditions
outside but couldn’t wait for the computer to calculate anything. Partly
because it had been damaged in the crash but also because there was gasoline
leaking all over the place. He didn’t have time to wait so he just put on a
suit and went outside. The wind knocked him off at first but then he managed to
sink his feet into the ground and at least walk slowly.

The storm was too strong but he managed to
walk away from the ship a few meters just before it exploded. He was pushed
away, landing on a puddle of mud and dirty water. The strength of the explosion
caused him to lose his balance and stability for a while. He even bled from one
if his ears but he could still hear fine, or so its seemed at least in the
middle of the storm. He had nowhere to go now so we just stood up and slowly
walked away from the wreckage. He turned around to see his ship one last time
and a small tear slid down his face. He had lived in that ship for years, but
now he had to move on and try to get someone to pick him up there. His suit had
a communications device but the wind wouldn’t let it work.

In the city below, as he tried to use the
device, a red light appeared in one of the consoles that checked security all
over the city. The computer had detected the device that the stranded alien was
using out there. But there was no one there to see it. Everyone had been
ordered to their homes due to the storm, to their fear of a wind that just
couldn’t get inside their city. However, there was a lonely native of L who
happened to be a priest. Secretly, he left his door opened when a storm
happened, as he loved the sound of the voices. He thought he could hear in the
wind what his ancestors wanted for all of them.

That priest was the only creature that heard
the destruction of the ship outside and he knew, right away, that that sound
had nothing to do with the storm. He ran to the metallic door that separated
the city from the outside world but just stood there, as if it was going to
open magically. Of course, it didn’t and he didn’t dare to open it by himself.
Doing so would mean the death penalty, by precisely stepping outside and never
coming back. The rules of their civilization were pretty clear and even it
moment, when his desire to see what was outside was so big in his heart, even
then he just couldn’t do anything. He just stood there by the door, waiting for
one more sound to make him do something crazy or at least let him know they
weren’t alone.

Outside, the stranded one was walking
clumsily, falling over very often, and almost going insane due to the voices
that he could now hear very clearly around him. He didn’t have a clue of what
they said, but he had a feeling it wasn’t anything good. Finally his device
began beeping and he thought that some ship was en route to save him. But that
wasn’t it. It had detected an energy source ahead, which might lead to life or
at least to a shelter. Going more and more crazy by the minute, he walked in
that suit as fast as he could, careful not to drop his bag with the small chest
inside. He had a massive headache and he knew he was bleeding but he just kept
on going.

Then, the priest heard a sound on the door. It
had been a subtle, soft sound but he knew he had heard it… Again! It was as if
someone was trying to know but didn’t have the strength to do it. As one of the
few that dared to listen to his planet, the priest knew this time the death
penalty was worth it. Even if there was nothing there when the door opened, he
knew something else had happened and that was good enough for him. He then ran
to the control panel and entered a password that had never been used. The door
moaned, as everything turned to lift it over the priest’s head. The wind
entered from the outside like a plague but he felt something else enter so he
closed the door instantly.

When the metallic door had fallen into its place,
the priest turned around and saw the stranded alien lying on the cave’s floor.
He was bleeding or at least that was what it looked like. Their blood was
yellow and his was green. His breath was slowing down. The priest dragged the
body to his house and there checked the alien. It was risky, but he took off
the helmet. He waited but nothing happened so he got to work and cured him as
well as he could. He removed him from the suit and put the bag with the chest
on a chair nearby. For days, no one knew there was an alien in that house and
they wouldn’t think twice about the bag on the chair.

As it happened, that bag carried the most
important object in the universe. And it was a coincidence, a very happy one to
be precise, that it had landed in that forgotten part of the universe as many
hands wanted that thing but only one person could manage to handle it. And that
person was not very far now.

lunes, 6 de octubre de 2014

It was a small moon, orbiting a hot, unwelcoming planet. Keljbalāh was all green, spotted with blue lakes and small settlements all around. No more than one million Keljbalans lived on the small moon. They were mainly farmers and enjoyed a simple life. They worked only to feed themselves, each family receiving a crop. It wasn't a property as such. The whole moon was their property, of every Keljbalan. If someone had a bad crop, their neighbors would help them. No problem, no ulterior motives, no evil.

Keljbalans had light yellow skin, due their conception of "mush". Mush grew all over and could be cooked into hundreds of dishes, combined with fruits and vegetables grown on the dark side. Most people lived in the light side but they thought that, with basic technology, they could bring light to the dark side and so they did.

Keljbalāh was peaceful, never having wars of any kind. They did have disease but the species was intelligent and used their natural resources to take care of the sick. Poverty was unknown as well as richness. They were advanced but preferred to be at ease, enjoying their time alive.

One day, however, the moon witnessed a historic event: an eclipse. They didn't occur often but, when they did, every Keljbalan would look to the sky and thank the Sun for everything he allowed to exist.

The day of the eclipse many people gathered with their families, on fields, mountains and arounds lakes, to contemplate the all mighty sun. In a matter of minutes it turned black and many gasped and screamed and laughed. The moon was all dark for a time. People held hands and kissed and hugged. It was their most special event.

The the sun returned to its normal state. But something was wrong. Some of the Keljbalans interested in astronomy, where looking at the sun with telescopes. And what they saw when the planet left was very strange.

In a matter of minutes every person knew, as no secrets existed on the moon: a small object, apparently increasing size with the passing of minutes, was detected in front of the Sun. The object was not another planet as its shape was similar to the arrows some Keljbalans used to hunt flying animals when in the forests.

Now, every person had to go home. And they all thought about the same thing that night: what's the object? Other people? A small moon? Some kind of transport?

The answer came two weeks after the eclipse. The ship, almost exactly like an arrow, landed near the largest settlement. And did nothing for a whole day. People from every part of Keljbalāh came to see it. The hull was silver, a color not many Keljbalans had seen, only the miners. The apparatus had some windows around, but no one to be seen.

The following day, a big door no one had seen before, opened and a ramp was deployed. People that had stayed to see more of the sip, gather close but not too close. From inside the sip, two creatures stepped out. Different from Keljbalans, their skin was light blue and they were tall and with big eyes. Slids insted of a proper nose and three toes on each feet and three fingers on each hand. They wore capes, the same colors of the blueberries that grew by the lakes.

The creatures then bowed and it appeared it was hard for them. Not because they didn't want to but because of their large bodies.

- We are Xysperians. We are explorers. We spent a day before coming out as we were learning your language and your physical traits.

Everyone was a bit scared but mostly intrigued. The creatures seemed peaceful and decent. No one understood how they had learn to breath and speak in a day but more questions arose.

Some villagers took them to take a stroll around the fields and up to a hill from were the largest lake in Keljbalāh could be seen. They explained their history to the explorers and they just listened.

The following days, more Xysperians came out of the ship. They said they were from a planet with a dim red sun and that they had explored the galaxy looking for other life forms. They had thought, for a time, they were alone.

Keljbalans asked them about their planet, their traditions, their food. And Xysperians did the same. They shared meals, jokes, work and stories. And the two species rapidly became friends.

After on week, the Xysperians got back to their ship and stayed there for another whole day. They told the Keljbalans they had to meet and talk about some important issued and that they would now soon enough the results of their discussion.

Not just waiting this time, Keljbalans thought their new friends might leave soon. So every single Keljbalan came to the valley were the ship had landed and organized a feast, like no one had seen in years on the planet. They wanted to give the best to their friends.

The following day, Xysperians enjoyed the feast. The food was delicious, and it was accompanied with dances and tales and laughs. Everyone had a great time.

But when the food was almost disappeared, the visitors told their hosts they had important news to share with them: they had come to this system as they had detected life with their scientific knowledge. They had actually detected life in at least a hundred other places in the galaxy. But they had chosen to visit Keljbalāh as another discovery led them to.

An asteroid was coming and would hit Keljbalāh planet with strength. The Xysperians thought that event would finish life in the moon, rendering it barren, if not destroyed.

It was hard for the people of the moon to pass from great happiness to that hollow feeling you have after receiving terrible news. The Xysperians said they would share every piece of information with them as they revealed the reason why they had come to Keljbalāh: they wanted to save them.

So for the next ten years, Xysperians and Keljbalans worked together to build three massive ships and then they had a day called Koflar: the day of ripping. The day they had to leave the place that had given them everything. Every single one of them left something on the ground, a memory that would stay there forever.

They boarded their ships and the Xysperians led them to a new planet, a place where they would relocate close to their new friends, to built something even better for everyone. Due their extraction from their home world, all Keljbalans developed blue lines on their bodies, different from everyone. They said they were there to remember them of their origins.

Twenty years after, the asteroid hit the planet and debris hit Keljbalāh, transforming it into a ball of rock, with no life or heart. The planet, however, slowly became habitable and it appeared to be the new hope of this system.